wards
by August Fai
Summary: There's no such thing as coincidence.


Draco Malfoy leaves his namesake manor at 10:23 PM on a Friday evening. His father has just slammed his mother's head into the wall, and she has just broken a vase and Draco doesn't want to know what she'll do with the extra-pointy shards—she'll kill _something¸_ he knows. Whether it be Father (unlikely), herself (not so unlikely), or the cat (very likely).

He ducks out of the back door of the kitchen, taking two apples along the way. His wand is tucked into one of his boots, and he accidentally-on-purpose forgets to take a coat with him. It doesn't matter, anyway—he'll just charm the gardens. He loves wards during the cold season; you can do anything with them if you know how.

-

Harry Potter finds that he has just stumbled through what seemed to be an enchanted forest; a sticky marsh and a bed of flowers. He leans against something that is not there—a ward, of course.

"Popping up all over the goddamn place like daisies," he mumbles to himself. "Everyone's so _paranoid._"

Beyond the ward, he sees, is a garden full of snapdragons and little ponds. There's a big mansion in front—white, made of marble. After walking for three straight days to no distinct location, Harry finds any home welcoming.

But he can't walk any farther anyway, so he just collapses at the foot of the ward and feigns sleep.

-

To set the warming spell and the silencing spells Draco desperately needs right now, he has to dismantle the wards for a few seconds, which could probably kill him, but it is better than being inside the house, where there is a higher possibility that he will probably kill himself.

"_Summissus_," he whispers, and hears a thud and a yell from somewhere to his right.

-

Harry Potter thinks he's broken his wrist.

-

In the thick night, Draco has to wait awhile until his eyes adjust. He could light his wand, but that would just blind him and leave him spots. So all he does is trudge towards the sound and hope his foot will collide with something solid.

"Bloody buggering _shit,_" someone says, and Draco's foot hits something.

"Ow," someone says again. "Fuck."

"You sound familiar," Draco shouldn't say, but does. Actually, he should probably be doing a number of things right now, such as going crazy and running inside and throwing hexes in random places, but he is too worn out. "Who are you?"

The person freezes—Draco can tell because nothing is nudging his foot anymore.

"Malfoy?" says Harry Potter, and Draco wishes he'd never taken down the wards.

-

One thing that Harry definitely is is _hungry. _He can practically smell the apple that Draco has in his pocket, but he won't ask for it. He would never.

-

"Potter," says Draco, sitting on a rock as far away from Harry as possible, "get out of my garden."

Harry wants to say _no, it is not _your _garden, it is probably your mother's and anyway I am too tired and I want to sleep _and _can I have an apple? Even a bit of it? _and _also maybe could I sleep in your house?_

But the last is definitely a no-go, and all Harry does is snort, which isn't saying anything, but isn't saying nothing.

"Potter, I told you to—"

"Can I have some of—"

_There goes my dignity, _Harry thinks sulkily as Draco smiles smugly.

"Tell me what you've been up to."

-

Draco doesn't really want Harry to leave, because he's the only bit of company he will have for the next few hours until the house stops emitting such a terrible aura, so he asks him to tell his story.

It's not that he _cares _about Potter, who has been on the face of the Prophet for the last week,it's just that he really does, in fact, like hearing Potter's voice. It is quite deep and raspy and dry-sounding, and he bets that if Potter had something to drink, or something with lots of juice—

-

"I can't even sp—"

Draco tosses the second apple to Harry.

-

--then it would sound less dry and more silky, more _wet. _

-

Harry does not know why he is explaining his absence of leave to Malfoy, of all people, in his _garden, _of all places, smushed between hard, steel-like wards. He does not know why he is eating an apple that came from Malfoy's kitchen that could be spiked with Veritaserum. He does not know why he has not hexed Malfoy yet or, for that matter, why Malfoy has not hexed him.

"I've been wandering," Harry starts, and a look of understanding comes so quickly to Malfoy's face that Harry almost wants to be relieved.

-

Draco said he wouldn't listen to the words that Potter was saying, but _I've been wandering _sounds so familiar to him that he can't help but look a little sympathetic. It just comes naturally and too fast, like a lightning bolt that strikes a lone tree in the middle of a field.

-

Harry realizes there is really no story to _tell. _It is just a flux of events that are completely unrelated, but Malfoy seems intent on listening (which hits Harry as too strange to think about). He opens his mouth, takes a bite of the apple, and lets the juice run down his chin.

"It's kind of stupid, actually," he says sheepishly.

-

_It's kind of stupid, actually. _The words bounce around in Draco's head. Whatever lame story Potter wants to tell probably_ is _stupid, but Draco thinks that feeling the urge to wipe the trickle of apple juice on Potter's chin off is probably the stupidest thing ever.

"I'm used to you being stupid. I have nowhere to go—tell your damn story," Draco says, and all the blood rushes to his face. Yes, every single drop.

-

So Harry tells his lame, damn patchwork quilt of a story.

Hermione lost her baby. She does not know why; Ron does not know why; Ginny does not know why; and Mrs. Weasley doesn't even know that Ron was sexually active. She's at St. Mungo's right now, and Ron is sulking still at Number 12, where the atmosphere is dank, like cold oatmeal.

Tonks can't change her hair anymore, just like back in sixth year, only this time it's worse. She won't eat, can't sleep, and refuses to see anybody. Everyone knows it's due to the fact that Remus is dying in God-knows-where, and she can't be there to see it happen.

Ginny wants him. Not wanting like in a comfort way, which would be fine, but wanting in a 'I'll-wear-my-lacy-knickers-and-expect-you-to-want-them-off' sort of way. And that's probably the worst one of all.

Seamus is dead. Dean is dead. Susan is dead. Parvati is dead. Padma died, too; right next to her sister's corpse. And Luna won't talk. At all.

"I had to run away," Harry finishes, looking at the stars through his lashes, and the invisible wards. "I couldn't take it."

Out of his peripheral vision he sees Malfoy chuckle. But nothing is funny.

-

Draco doesn't feel the punch, he _hears _it. It comes _swoosh_ing through the thin, cold air at him, and connects with a solid _crack _at his jaw. He stumbles backward and falls into a small pond, which is a _splish, _and coughs with a subtle hacking undertone.

"Nothing was funny," snarls Potter, which makes Draco want to laugh more.

"But you're _designed _to take things," he says, instead of laughing. "It's your calling, isn't it? Saying 'I couldn't take it' is quite amusing, you know, because it's like you're a faulty machine or something. You have such a _sob _story, Potter. Was that it, then? Did your screws rust over?"

-

Harry is angry and feels like yelling, because Malfoy just called him a faulty machine, and laughed at his so-called sob story, and wanted to laugh again, probably, at Harry's own reaction. He feels like throwing his apple core at Malfoy and screaming until he vomits. Half of him does, anyway—the other half, frighteningly, wants to cry.

"My screws did not rust over," he says calmly. "I just—I dunno. Couldn't live with it. You wouldn't be able to take it, either."

"No," Malfoy agrees, and Harry looks up. "Judging by the way I had to walk out on my fighting parents back there—" He motions towards the house. "—I don't think I could take your sob story, no."

-

Both of them fall silent.

-

It is past twelve when Draco sees that Potter has fallen asleep, his head against the ward and his legs curled into the concave space of one particularly large rock. His own head is beginning to hurt and he knows he has to sleep, but if he does he won't know if anyone is coming and then Potter will be found out and Draco will be chastised for running out in the middle of a quarrel (though why, he doesn't know).

"Why do I care, though," he whispers to himself, rubbing his arms (the warming spell is wearing out), "if Potter gets found out?"

He yawns once, twice. There is loud sobbing coming from the fifth floor of the manor, and Draco knows it will continue on for the next couple of hours. He sets himself down on the ground next to Potter and, when he finds his head has fallen onto Potter's shoulder, can't muster up any energy to move it.

-

Harry swings in and out of consciousness during the night. One minute he dreams of red-haired monsters and bushy-haired babies and the next he thinks Draco's head is against his shoulder. But no, he must be dreaming—that, or insane. He just called Malfoy Draco, after all.

_Stark raving sane, _says something in the back of his mind. But he forgets to listen, and dips back into dreaming.

-

Draco dreams of silky overtones, apples, and fluid noises. Potter's voice, essentially.

-

The next morning, Draco wakes up with his head in the snapdragons and his hand clutching an apple core. Somewhere in the distance, someone is walking away, crunching leaves, in the opposite direction—away from him.


End file.
